My Play
Ha. First, an update of my last entry regarding my first play: I left the library after writing this entry 8 days ago and went to dinner. At dinner, I continued to brainstorm about the subject of my play. My dilemma was this: Do I write something of real importance to myself, something in which I am willing to invest my every arduous belief, something with which I am likely to form an unhealthy obsession, something that will consume my thoughts, something over which I will fret and cry, something that will likely disappoint, the only kind of thing that I would ever be capable of loving but am most likely to hate... OR... Do I write something to which I need feel no close ties, something that will simply amuse me? So I went to dinner (and you can see from my last entry that I was hardly considering myself to be capable of going through the torture of the first option... I just couldn't muster the faith to attempt it.) So I went to dinner and someone said to me: Do what is least painful.
So there you go, I wrote something a bit satirical out of which I got a laugh and to which I committed no actual emotional resources.
Have I turned into a coward?!?! Can I expect any return on such a cheap investment?!?
Yesterday, my playwrighting prof went up 400 times in my estimation (I didn't realize she was this perceptive) by pointing out the fact that nothing is at stake for me and therefore, no matter how high the stakes are for my characters, no one is going to care. If I don't care, why should I expect anyone else to?
Hoof... I must re-write my play... So back to the original dilemma...
So this poem sums it up better than I can:
The Dreamer and the Dreamed have Dinner
Rien n'est, en effet, plus desenchantant, plus penible, que de regarder, apres des annees, ses phrases. Elles se sont en quelques sort decantees et deposees au fond du livre; et, la plupart du temps les volumes ne sont pas ainsi que les vins qui s'ameliorent en vieillissant; une fois depouilles par l'age, les chapitres s'eventent, et leur bouquet s'etiole. -Huysmans
It is the ripest hour. He stands before the window,
Scans the night and sighs, clouding the pane.
Road. Streetlamps. Shops. The solstice light
Smooths a pool of similes disguised as names.
His carafe, half drained, opaque in the dark,
Conceals before it is uncorked and poured.
Beyond mere sense, so does his heart
Until the clock, clicks locked in random clusters,
Resolves arhythmically. Chuck: a car door?
'Her Citroen," he things, because he trusts her
Cycles and her secret female arts.
All wines retain impurities. A sip
Numbs an unexamined intention as she knocks.
His welcomes are readied with overkill workmanship.
'Late again.' They talk. They spend the twilight
On his terrace rereading Against the Grain.
'Like tears in different colours...' (She abhors
It when he does this. Large drops of warm rain
Dapple their shoulders, so they drift indoors.)
She stretches and yawns; he persists unaware...
'Like gazing at a photographic detail
Of a wineglass, unable to say what it is.'
Why must he slow the sunset with these flares?
'Oh for a beaker full of the warm south,'
She offers. Stumped, he laughs for sheer decorum.
Nothing slowly happens. Their shadows stretch out
In a half-light charged with visionary boredom:
Pale whims, faint furies, dim endeavours
Await the age's end, the commonsense of darkness.
When will darkness come? When will the lovers?
-Michael Donaghy
So there you go, I wrote something a bit satirical out of which I got a laugh and to which I committed no actual emotional resources.
Have I turned into a coward?!?! Can I expect any return on such a cheap investment?!?
Yesterday, my playwrighting prof went up 400 times in my estimation (I didn't realize she was this perceptive) by pointing out the fact that nothing is at stake for me and therefore, no matter how high the stakes are for my characters, no one is going to care. If I don't care, why should I expect anyone else to?
Hoof... I must re-write my play... So back to the original dilemma...
So this poem sums it up better than I can:
The Dreamer and the Dreamed have Dinner
Rien n'est, en effet, plus desenchantant, plus penible, que de regarder, apres des annees, ses phrases. Elles se sont en quelques sort decantees et deposees au fond du livre; et, la plupart du temps les volumes ne sont pas ainsi que les vins qui s'ameliorent en vieillissant; une fois depouilles par l'age, les chapitres s'eventent, et leur bouquet s'etiole. -Huysmans
It is the ripest hour. He stands before the window,
Scans the night and sighs, clouding the pane.
Road. Streetlamps. Shops. The solstice light
Smooths a pool of similes disguised as names.
His carafe, half drained, opaque in the dark,
Conceals before it is uncorked and poured.
Beyond mere sense, so does his heart
Until the clock, clicks locked in random clusters,
Resolves arhythmically. Chuck: a car door?
'Her Citroen," he things, because he trusts her
Cycles and her secret female arts.
All wines retain impurities. A sip
Numbs an unexamined intention as she knocks.
His welcomes are readied with overkill workmanship.
'Late again.' They talk. They spend the twilight
On his terrace rereading Against the Grain.
'Like tears in different colours...' (She abhors
It when he does this. Large drops of warm rain
Dapple their shoulders, so they drift indoors.)
She stretches and yawns; he persists unaware...
'Like gazing at a photographic detail
Of a wineglass, unable to say what it is.'
Why must he slow the sunset with these flares?
'Oh for a beaker full of the warm south,'
She offers. Stumped, he laughs for sheer decorum.
Nothing slowly happens. Their shadows stretch out
In a half-light charged with visionary boredom:
Pale whims, faint furies, dim endeavours
Await the age's end, the commonsense of darkness.
When will darkness come? When will the lovers?
-Michael Donaghy